Page 84 of Dream Girl Drama

“Chloe!” seemingly every Bearcat shouted happily at once, many of them converging on her with open arms to give her a hug. She whipped up a hand to stop them in their tracks.

“Uh-oh,” Mailer muttered, stepping back. Pausing. Frowning. “Hold up a second, what is Chloe doing here?”

“That’s what I would like to know,” Chloe said, squaring off with Elton, whose eyes were hidden behind a pair of wraparound Ray-Bans.

“I invited her,” Elton responded to Mailer, grinning. “She’s here to cheer the real baseball players on.”

“Excuse me?” sputtered Chloe.

“Excuse her?” Corrigan echoed, rearing back with visible affront.

Chloe was vibrating, head to toe, a week’s worth of frustration shooting upward from the soles of her feet to occupy her throat in a wreath of spikes. “Did you invite me here underthe false pretense of a doggy date, just so you could piss off my friends?”

“I don’t know, did I?” He shot the Bearcats a wink. “And did it work?”

Cue the eruption of the century.

Hockey players converged on baseball players, everyone arguing at the top of their lungs. Gloves were thrown down into the dirt. Off to the right, there was a heavy sigh and the rustle of chain-link, Burgess inserting himself in the middle of the fray with an air of exasperated patience. “Just a reminder that we’re all adults here,” said Sir Savage. “Let’s take a second to locate our maturity.”

“Some of us never had any to begin with,” Elton said, taking a step closer to Chloe. “Obviously she figured that out and made a better choice.”

“Get any closer to her and I will use your kneecaps for batting practice.”

Chloe’s world froze at the sound of Sig’s voice behind her.

Her bruised heart climbed through her aching throat into her mouth, fingernails curling into her palms and possibly drawing blood. How could everything be right and wrong at the same time? Sig was there, the heat of his chest warming her back. She could see his shadow on the ground, those broad shoulders, the outline of his beloved head in a baseball cap, his dark hair doing that hockey flow flip at the back and sides. More than anything in this life or the next ten, she wanted to turn around and leap into his arms.

But she couldn’t.

She’d cut him off, for one.

Severed the thing in their lives that brought them the most joy.

And... she didn’t know if anyone present had seen the article. Almost certainly, Sig’s teammates knew about the insinuationmade by the reporter in theGlobe. But hadn’t they already been aware of the odd relationship between Sig and Chloe prior to that?

Hadn’t everyone?

Did these baseball players know, though? Did Elton?

Chloe’s brain told her not to turn around, because she wouldn’t be able to diffuse or dampen the happiness she felt, just to be close to him, but her heart overruled her mind and she turned, anyway, letting the sight of him smooth the rough-edges inside of her created by their weeklong separation.

Sig’s wild-eyed gaze, however, remained fastened over her head. On Elton.

His pupils blocked out every bit of brown, his thick chest rising, falling, his hockey body poised to throw down at a split second’s notice.

“Did you fucking hear me, or not?” Sig’s jaw popped. “Step away from her.”

“Sig...” Burgess said, a wealth of meaning in his tone.

“You heard the man,” Mailer chimed in. “She’s ours.”

“I didn’t say ours,” Sig corrected Mailer without taking his attention off Elton.

Mailer coughed. “You were thinking it.”

“No, I wasn’t.” Finally—finally—Sig looked at Chloe, blinking several times, chest plummeting, before hitting Elton with another warning look. “You brought her here just to be a dick. You’re going to delete her number now, because you don’t deserve to have it.”

“Whatever.” Elton shrugged, sauntered the few steps that separated him and Sig, lowering his voice, so only Sig and Chloe could hear it. “I hear she’s taken anyway.”

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